Well folks, I’ve had a couple of weeks to digest everything that was Jamaica Carnival 2019. I’ve had tons of questions about what the process was, where we stayed, was it really as great as the stories? Yes, tons of questions so here we go!
Planning for Carnival
December 2018 found me at my friend Stef’s house. She had invited me to her apartment on that cold winter evening to meet her folks. What y’all need to understand is Stef is Jamaican and the ultimate cool girl. I know we are past the age where it matters but Stef is hella cool. And her folks? Y’all know when you meet your friend’s parents and immediately realize that they were probably the ‘cool parents?’ Her folks were lovely and they said, ‘Binja you should come to visit us in Jamaica’. Umm YES! Stef then mentioned – girl, we are going to Jamaica in April for carnival … let’s go! And so the planning began.
Step 1: Set up group chat
Step 2: Pick and pay for your costumes
Step 3: Purchase flights
Step 4: Purchase fête tickets
Step 5: Arrive in Kingston
Step 6: Have the best time of your life
Step 7: Get back home
Step 1: The Group
Getting everyone on board was key and Stef being the ultimate planner knew this and quickly pulled us all together in a group chat. We used WhatsApp to communicate as all the girls were in different states and countries. We used the group chat as our control center. We made all the decisions on costumes, flights, additional parties and meals in the chat. We decided on what we would do during the daytime as most of the parties we wanted to attend were at night.
I would suggest that you set up a group chat and use it to the max: share links, images, links to playlists! Yes y’all, we had playlists shared in our group chat. We wanted to be fully Soca ready! We had the latest playlists from our favorite DJs in the chat and for those that weren’t up to date with the latest Soca (like yours truly) this was so beneficial!
STEP 2: costume purchase
Ok so what I didn’t know about carnival is that you purchase costumes and all that goes along with it before you even land! Every year there is a theme for carnival and this year’s was cities of the world. So the costumes were named after cities. Most of the major cities were represented! Many of us landed on Florence! That’s the costume that you see me wearing.
Just so y’all have an idea of how crazy purchasing a costume gets, we started looking at costumes in December and some of the options were already SOLD OUT! How sway?!
Once we decided on Florence, the second decision to make was whether we wanted to be front line or back line. What do these mean? Well, if you’ve seen carnival pictures before, the folks with the large wings are front line and the smaller wings are called back line.
- Local tip – don’t say that the costume has ‘wings’. Yes, I know, they look like wings. Locally, they are called ‘backpacks’.
step 3 &4: Purchase tickets
The best thing we did was purchase literally every ticket to every event and activity before we landed. I didn’t realize how much we had purchased before we even got to Jamaica because we did so much in advance of the trip!
We purchased tickets from specific online vendors, through Stef when she was on the ground in Jamaica or via Eventbrite.
Here’s what was purchased:
- Airline tickets – Boston to Kingston flights were pretty cheap at around $300 in January. I fly Delta or Jet Blue and both have pretty good deals to Kingston!
- Sunrise fête tickets – this was one of my favorite parties. It’s an all inclusive party that kicks off at 5am!
- _uck work party tickets – this was an igloo party (aka a cooler party aka BYOB).
- Tribe Ignite Jamaica 2019 – definitely another fave! There were plenty of outdoor food vendors at this party. It was also an igloo party, which was perfect as we got to purchase some amazing Jamaican food as we partied!
- Devon House – we purchased tickets to tour the historic Devon House. We didn’t get to see much of the place but it helped that we had our tickets in advance.
- Bob Marley Museum and Tuff Gong International – we got tickets to tour Bob Marley’s house (a must do in my opinion) as well as his recording studios.
STEP 5 &6: KINGSTON
We stayed at my gracious host Stef’s home in Kingston. My suggestion is to go to Kingston and experience it with a local.
Sidebar – I think this is true for a lot of travel. Meeting up with locals and getting recommendations on where to eat, what to see and where to explore is always best.
I love Kingston! The people are amazing and the diversity blew me away. Honestly Kingston felt a little bit like Toronto in that all races and backgrounds seemed to be represented!
Temperature wise Kingston in April was around high 70’s to low 90’s. In other words it was heavenly weather especially after coming in from Boston where the weather was at 49 degrees (these temps are in Fahrenheit by the way).
Kingston has everything from beaches to the Blue Mountain … so if you’re looking to go for carnival you can fill your days with hiking, beach days, swimming and your nights with lots of parties/ fêtes! I share my Kingston vacation guide in this post here.
Costume Pick Up
Carnival is about a week long celebration consisting of parties/ fêtes that culminate with a road march on Sunday. So knowing that the road was on Sunday, we picked up our costumes on Saturday. The pickup process was fascinating to me! We had to stand in line for check in – you know validate that you are who you say you are lol!
Then we moved on to the actual pick up of the costumes but because it was the day before the road march, the lines were incredibly long and the process took over an hour to complete! We picked up our backpacks that contained a bunch of sponsored items as well as our front line or back line back packs aka wings.
Once the costumes were secured, it was time to figure out if they fit as we hoped and what the additional accessories would be. Did we need tights? Specific fanny packs? Makeup? If a costume needed fixing or ‘tweaking’ the team pulled together to ensure that each costume looked as it did on the models (or as close to it as possible)! This was one of the perks of having a group of girls on this trip! Everyone pulled together and the end result was amazing you can see in the image below! All the girls looked like carnival queens!
The Road
There’s no way to really prepare you for the road beyond – get a good pair of sneakers. Ladies, notice I said sneakers … not heels! Heels are great for photos but to be honest, you need sneakers, probably best to get some with some type of foam as you will be on your feet ALL DAY! Can we all take a moment to appreciate my squad? I STAN these carnival queens!
The road march starts at 9am and typical ends at 7pm. There are breaks for food and ‘wing checks’. There are bathrooms along the way that you can jump into but you’re on the road dancing the entire time!
At some point my friends decided it was more of a hassle to dance with the wings on and so at the ‘wing check’ they got rid of the wings.
The road has floats where sponsors and musicians usually ride. Machel Montano, the king of Soca, was on one of the floats performing! The road is just fun! Everyone is excited to be there. Lots of dancing and tons of music playing
Step 7: Get Back Home
So there we have it … Jamaica Carnival 2019! Were you there? Do you have any additional questions? Share in the comments below.
To Note:
* I did not attend the road march on Sunday (I had to head back to Boston for work) but my friends shared their opinions and the videos that you see on the blog.
** One of the questions that I most get is – did you keep the costume? Absolutely not! Haha, it was a one time event … and most people don’t keep them especially after a full day on the road. And if you are flying back, it’s very tricky to go through security with the wings … not sure you want all that hassle.
Images professionally shot by: @studio_michaelelliott and @thediahannproject
